"Contested Authority," uses the 1825 Prairie du Chien treaty council as a case study to examine the dynamics of power and authority of an Indigenous borderland located in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century wild rice lakes and maple sugar forests of the western Great Lakes. This research centers on the interactions and overlapping territorial claims of Dakota and Ojibwe communities that complicated efforts by United States officials to solidify their own claims to the region. The Americans argued that leaders of Great Lakes tribes should delineate their boundaries believing that such boundaries would secure peace between the tribes. American authority in the region was still a weak presence, but American efforts led by Michigan Territorial Governor, Lewis Cass, intended to strengthen the federal government's position in the lands west of Lake Michigan. The ongoing conflict between the Ojibwe and Dakota greatly concerned the Americans as the tribe's sporadic warfare dampened the enthusiasm for settlement and endangered American settlers. Cass' efforts to enforce American ideas of private property conflicted with Ojibwe and Dakota community understandings of environmental resources and property. This research presents the multi-dimensional relationships that made up authority in Ojibwe and Dakota society, explores the efforts of Cass and American agents to disrupt these traditional power structures, and highlights how Indigenous leadership structures persisted despite these American attempts to dismantle them.-- Abstract.
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